Album review: Delilah’s From The Roots Up is an exhausting collection of Mariah Carey-style yodelling, with the groove and funk that defines soul music surgically removed.

Delilah’s début From The Roots Up has the odd pleasant moment, but is largely soulless (Picture: Atlantic)

Delilah is the stage name of Paris-born, London-raised singer Paloma Stoecker, who decided Ms Faith was the only Paloma the pop world could handle and so adopted another moniker.

She’s guested with Chase & Status and one track here features Plan B but most of this debut LP could be loosely described as trip hop, using Bollywood strings, burbling synths and minimal drums.

There are pleasant moments but what becomes increasingly exhausting is Stoecker’s singing style, an endless litany of overwrought emoting and groaning noises. It’s the kind of pained, Mariah Carey-style yodelling that passes for soul these days.

But, as proved by Stoecker’s soulless readings of Chaka Khan’s Ain’t Nobody and Minnie Riperton’s Inside My Love, it’s a way of surgically removing the groove and funk that defines so much great soul music.